I was inspired by @deshipu to get an adafruit trinket M0 and redo the lightsaber with it, since the atsamd21 being used has a DAC on board and enough pins left to control some neopixels, check a button and grep stuff over I2C from the accelerometer. Just playing around with arduino and analog write I can say that it sounds so much better already. 

There will be a connector involved for the neopixels and I want to make everything fit the acrylic pipe first, then redesign the 3D printed parts where needed.